I never went to school to learn how to become a recording engineer.* But, regardless, some studio fundamentals and skills took me years to learn, and every time I did gain knowledge it was often under a ton of pressure – usually during an actual recording session!
When tracking Sleater-Kinney's iconic One Beat album in 2002, producer John Goodmanson [Tape Op#35] pulled up to my studio with a Pro Tools TDM rig. Honestly, upon seeing that, I was terrified. I'd seen Pro Tools (and even Digidesign's Sound Tools) since first making use of it in 1993. I had booked sessions with other engineers to use it to repair tracks and edit DAT-recorded mixes together, but I had never hit the space bar on a digital audio workstation. John patiently showed me how to create a track, how to arm it for input, how to set levels, and how to hit record and punch in. That was it; I was on my way. Soon, a Digidesign Digi 001 had replaced my DAT machine for mixing stereo down to. Not long after that, I could handle multitrack digital sessions, even though I'd once told a friend, "There will never be a computer in this studio."